Lensman smitten with nature

NATURE'S NARRATOR: SNAPS THE TITLE OF WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR

- Michel Bega

South African photographer Wim van den Heever has been awarded one of the world's most prestigious wildlife photography accolades - the Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2025.

The Pretoria resident's photograph of a brown hyena walking through the streets of Namibia's deserted old mining town, Kolmanskop, was selected from over 60 000 entries, from 113 countries as this year's best wildlife image.

The competition is organised by the Natural History Museum of London.

Van den Heever had been visiting Kolmanskop for 10 years in an attempt to capture the photograph.

"I knew there was a potential for photographing brown hyenas in Kolmanskop because I had seen the tracks," he said.

Due to the elusive nature of the hyenas, the rarest of the four species, he decided the best method would be to use a camera trap technique, which involves setting up a camera in a specific location and then waiting for movement to automatically trigger the shutter.

"It was an incredibly difficult technique to master and refine - both battling sandstorms, fog banks and more, to working out the composition and camera settings for when you expect the animal to appear," he said.

"The morning when I arrived to fetch my equipment predawn, I checked my camera and saw that it had triggered three times. The first two frames were empty, but the third - the final shot took my breath away.

"The composition, the mood, the posture of the hyena... everything was exactly as I had envisioned it for years."